Global trade, development, and sustainability agendas are in retreat as rising populism upends the post-World War II order. From the resurgence of conflicts and tariff wars to the long-standing deadlock of global trade talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the stalling of global climate talks, and the impact of successive geopolitical and economic shocks, the benefits of the current multilateral system are being tested.  

Detractors of the WTO have long criticised the uneven distribution of gains, which have disadvantaged low-income countries, workers in historically protected industries, and smallholder farmers and SMME food processors whose production for domestic markets has often been displaced by export-oriented and capital-intensive commodities. Often, governments have enacted trade policy as an end in itself, with export growth and market access taking precedence over worker’s rights, people’s livelihoods, the fight against malnutrition, and the protection of nature and ecosystems for future generations.    

Within agricultural and food systems, trade has played a complicated role. On one hand, it has supported economic growth and productivity gains, created and expanded markets, and helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of hunger and poverty. Yet, it has also increased exposure and vulnerability of millions of other people to price volatility and external shocks, especially in countries heavily dependent on food imports. It has externalised environmental costs across borders and accelerated the expansion of supermarkets and consumption of ultra-processed foods.   

Against this backdrop, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in Germany commissioned our three organisations* to develop a new vision for transformative agricultural trade that aligns with BMZ’s new development strategy and supports agrifood systems resilience, equitable market participation, and climate mitigation and adaptation.  

Development partners such as Germany occupy an important space between the wealth and power of industrialised economies that have benefited significantly from global trade, and the complexity of needs and interests of low- and middle-income countries. Yet trade policy itself is an exclusive competence of the European Union (EU). Therefore, for development partners like Germany the question is not what their trade policy should be, but rather how their development policy can navigate and complement EU trade policy, ensuring that trade plays a supportive role.   

The German and European policy landscapes into which this research arrives has shifted in the two years since our work began. BMZ's most recent trade strategy was premised on a functioning multilateral trading system. It posited capacity building as the primary instrument of support. Both these assumptions have largely been overtaken by the geo-political developments described above. Meanwhile, at the European level, development finance has been reorganized around the Global Gateway strategy, marking a shift from traditional assistance towards investment partnerships aligned with European strategic interests.  

Yet, agriculture and food systems do not feature among Global Gateway's five priority sectors — digital, climate and energy, transport, health, and education and research. Where they are mentioned, they appear mainly as components of climate or transport-corridor investments. This absence reflects uncertainty about what trade-related development policy in agriculture and food systems should aim to achieve. This is exactly the question this research seeks to resolve.  

We believe that governments would benefit from tightening the relationship among trade, food security, and nutrition objectives, as well as from a sharper distinction between the goals to be achieved (e.g., ending hunger and poverty) and the means available to realise those goals (e.g., trade, competition, and investment). It is critical to resist the temptation to consider the expansion of a means, such as trade, as a substitute for the realisation of goals such as ending hunger and malnutrition.   

We start this research by looking back at how we got here: structural trends, disruptions, and concentration and power dynamics that have exposed fragilities in today’s agricultural and food trade systems. We then consulted with development partners, civil society, researchers, companies, and international organisations on the lessons learned from the past 30 years of development sector involvement in agricultural trade to understand what has worked and what has not. Finally, we are developing concrete recommendations for a new development strategy for agricultural trade for Germany and the European Union.   

Our journey is nearing completion. We have identified a set of interrelated structural trends reshaping agricultural and food systems and redefining the role of trade within them: the rise in protectionism, the shift of agricultural production, consumption, and trade to the Global South, continuing urbanisation, the spread of supermarkets, the complex burden of malnutrition, growing concentration of market power by a few companies, environmental breakdown resulting from human activity, and bottlenecks and chokepoints that increasingly disrupt trade routes. These dynamics are transforming how food is produced, distributed, and consumed, while reshaping patters of interdependences, risk, and resilience across countries and regions. Understanding these dynamics is critical to assessing how agricultural trade can better support equitable, resilient, and sustainable agriculture and food systems.